


Closed Set

by Amand_r, cruentum



Category: Torchwood RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, SRS RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:02:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r, https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cruentum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood is over for Gareth and John, but everything keeps crashing back together in Cardiff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closed Set

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes:** This took forever. No srs we started it before the end of La Cage. Beta'd by paragraphs.  
>  **Official Statement:** This is a work of fiction. Those people represented here are based on fact but ultimately fictive constructs of celebrity personas, and are not meant to be understood or read as realistic interpretations of said real people. Translation: We don't know them. We borrowed from gossip, but this is all made up, peoples.

He and Gemma stumble in the door, tired and worn out and ready for about twenty-four hours of sleep. Gemma doesn't sleep well on planes, and if she doesn't sleep, then he doesn't sleep. But they have been bouncing from con to con and in between he's texting Rhys and Clarky about the album, yeah yeah, it'll be great, and he and Gemma have been roaming hotel lobbies trying to show that they are a thing and it's all just too much. A drink by the bar, standing outside for a smoke, making it up for the room sooner rather than later. 

When they get there, he'd been letting a mate stay at the flat while he'd been gone, and he hadn't been too clear about when they'd be back or about the general cleanliness required, so it had been a bad sign when they'd walked in on him and his girlfriend getting frisky on the dining room table, and the smell overall had been less than what even Gareth would deem sanitary. 

Gemma lets out a little squeak, and Gareth just sighs, picks up their suitcases and they back out of the front hallway and outside. He shuts the door and stands there, wondering if he can just kick them out, though he can tell by the look on Gemma's face that the smell had better be gone by the time they reenter, so he might have to give his mate a few days. And the number of a good fumigator. 

Gemma grinds her jaw. The circles under her eyes aren't from smeared makeup but exhaustion, and he can't look much better. 

"Not another hotel," she moans, and he's trying to think of any small place that they can just pull up to and fall into a room, but he can't think of anything, and he'll have to ring information or someone, or— 

He pulls his mobile from his back pocket and punches in the number, standing on the veranda and watching their neighbour's dog take a piss on one of the tyres of the car. It's good to be home. 

The phone picks up after the third ring, even though it's eleven at night. 

"Yeah, John, it's Gaz," he says even though it's obvious who it is because every mobile in the universe has caller ID and he knows that John has his number programmed in. "I need a small favour."

***

The drive is shorter than he had anticipated, Gemma finally sleeping in the passenger seat, and when they pull up to the house, he can see that the windows are shuttered and the dead end street is dark. Everyone here has already gone to bed.

The key is under the mat. He stares at it in his hand for a second, thinking, ' _Jesus Barrowman, you're a celebrity and you keep the key to your house under the_ mat.' 

Gemma mumbles something noncommittal when they slide in, like ghosts who just need a wisp of a crack to get inside the house, and she's quiet, flipping on the lights after an experimental grope, and then— 

Then she screams, because John's life-sized Dalek is there to greet them, eyestalk pointed. Gemma drops her suitcase and he starts himself, because normally it's pushed into the corner, but here it is, in the foyer, a cosmic joke (more like a Barrowman clan joke, really), for the first unsuspecting victim, which in this case is them. Gareth drops his bags and rests a hand on her shoulder, and she hits him, laughing, now that the fright has worn off. 

"John, you're bollocks," he mumbles, rolling the Dalek back to the corner. 

Gemma trudges down the hall and settles on the sofa in the living area, all pale on red, eyes dull with lack of sleep and possibly a hangover and he settles in next to her, trying to hear the waves from here, but it's hard. He'd have to open a door, but the house is cold and the shuttered windows give an overall feel of being underground. He pulls out his mobile when the text notification buzzes. 

_oh yeah btw watch out when you go in the front door. rogue Dalek. :P jb_

He texts back. _u suck._ To Gemma he says, "Spare room's down that hall." There's no way he's sleeping in John's bed.

***

Waking up in unfamiliar beds makes him think hotel room, then memories of grotty flat and late-night favours, then his stomach rumbles and Gemma turns over next to him, taking the sheet with her. He pads out of the room, headache and fighting the urge to sick up just to feel better. After a piss it takes him a while to figure out where the button for the window shutters is, and electro motors hum, top of the game. He grins when he remembers how they trashed this place during the wrap party. There was singing. Barrowman hogged the karaoke machine.

Grey mid-afternoon light floods the room, Emmerich film material of dramatic moments, it deserves some music. They should ask Murray. The place is impeccable and he gets sitting here with a beer and just staring out at the water. Better than his place looks whenever he's gone even if he keeps telling himself to clean it up so as not to get back to a shithole, with or without mates screwing on his kitchen table. Empty and abandoned for the late fall, the fridge is empty as well and turned off, even. He'll have to text John about heating, about-- He'll have to call someone else, figure out other details, make other arrangements. He doesn't need John to think he's entirely lost the plot of sane living and gone round the bend with the past year scrolling by. 

Might as well be living in a cardboard box in Newport. 

He dresses, takes a shower, lets Gemma sleep and leaves her a note, then drives round to ASDA in Cardiff, not sure where to find anything in Penarth, gets some food for a day or two, frozen pizzas, spaghettis, they can go eat out, toast, dog food, bananas - should have checked Barrowman's bar, but he packs a sixpack because John doesn't drink beer, some rule about wine for the generation past 40. Or just those with style. After ASDA he fetches Maynard and Darcey from the sitter and doesn't dwell on the minutes in the yard that he didn't bawl into their fur. 

John texts him on the way back to the house. _Text if anything's not working, i'll have Rhys call someone. jb_

Gareth keeps his eyes on the road and even gives a wave to the neighbours as he pulls up in John's driveway. He adds a smile to the wave, alleviate suspicions. It's the fuck-me smile, the one he uses when he can't be bothered. He must look like shit still. The dogs bound out of the car and he lets them into the house, praying they don't piss in a corner to mark their territory. Maynard promptly does, but Gareth drags the groceries in before he can be arsed to clean it up. 

Gemma's showered, hair still wet, she's cradling a coffee in her hands as she leans against the dining table. 

"Hey babe," Gareth says, setting the sixpack down next to her and leans down for a kiss, then a sip of coffee. 

"I started the laundry," she says and Darcey demands cuddles while Gareth's going down to his hands and knees to get rid of Maynard's piss, then opens the door for them to play in the backyard, whistling them back when they make to jump over the fence. The air comes in cold and Gemma shivers. He hugs her. 

"You called your mate yet?" she asks. 

Gareth pulls a face, motions a _yeah yeah_ and stuffs things into the fridge because he doesn't want to think about it yet. Did he buy eggs? No hotel breakfast, he'd kill to have someone just dump something on his plate, but he can do without being ogled as he stuffs his face with bacon, so win-lose, really, and he sets up to make something. Maybe something that isn't frozen pizza.

***

They are sitting on the beach with bottles in brown paper bags because the part they are on is public, watching the waves and trying to be sedate and calm and uncaring. Gareth pretends that the house is his sometimes, mostly because he'd like to have a house someday, but that means a bunch of responsible shit he's not in the mood for this year.

Gemma likes popping the seaweed with her foot, like organic bubblewrap. 

Occasionally people pass by with their dogs. Gareth calls Darcey and Maynard back then, and they heel, which is nice, because the last thing he needs is to be yelled at by some other dog owner because his kids are poorly behaved. Maynard likes the beach, keeps bringing him clumps of bug-filled seaweed, and Darcey is plastered to his leg for most of it. She doesn't like getting her feet wet at all, though why is a mystery, when she'll happily stick both paws in the toilet, sometimes before he can flush it. 

It's a smile and nod kind of thing, when they see other people, but after a day or two, one of the regulars comes by and stops, smiling. 

"'Lo," Gareth says, and Gemma salutes the man with her bagged bottle. 

"You're here for John Burroman, aren't you?" he says with a knowing wink.

Gemma laughs so hard he thinks that he might have to make excuses for her. Maynard drops a mouthful of seaweed into his lap and it stinks to high heaven. 

It's a proper vacation. They chat to the bloke, who tells them about Doctor Who and Torchwood. Gemma's dying, Gareth keeps a straight face, he's not an actor for nothing, before they make their way back up to the house when the wind gets too cold and he fancies catching some sport on John's flatscreen. 

Gemma pushes the phone to his chest though as soon as they walk in, and he's run out of things to say that would let him avoid it any longer. The conversation with his mate is rather one-sided, and by the end Gareth feels he got suckered into a pile of excuses and hasn't managed to get anything definite out of him about when he'd leave his place or the state of it or if it would be clean whenever he'd fancy dropping by his own bloody flat. 

Gemma listens to his side of the conversation and looks like she might kick him in the balls as he hangs up. 

The rest of the evening is frosty. 

Nice house, really nice, but not his. Maynard pisses on John's couch again and he isn't sure yet how to explain that to John. 

They watch sports, then Gemma fucks off to bed and he fingers the phone, he should be calling his mate back and make some demands, he really should, but in the end he doesn't. He texts John instead. _We'll figure something out, be out of your hair soon._ because he is twenty-eight and not a failure. There's no text from John back, but then, John's still on stage, it's Saturday night. 

The flatscreen plays a shopping channel and he watches with a beer in his hand, the dogs curled up with him. He nods off, and when he wakes again, Gemma's crawled onto the sofa with him, blanket wrapped around her, asleep with her head on his shoulder. He draws her close, kisses her forehead. His mobile shows a new message, but he shakes her awake and gets them both into bed proper, the dogs following.

***

They don't stay very long—four days. Long enough to get the shutters off, because as soon as Collectormania's over John has to be back for panto rehearsals anyway. Gareth is supposed to spend the next few days with the band locked in a cabin, writing lyrics, but he's pretty sure that he left his lyric book on the plane to Boston. He tells Clarky that someone stole it, but really, it's okay. He bought a new one in a drugstore in Boston and he's ready to go at it again, spent the flight back home scribbling lyrics while Gemma mainlined telly on the screen in front of her (and then they had to beat the pants off some shit in 43A at in-flight trivia). So he and Gemma pack up the dogs and drive up north to Rhys' shitehole cabin for a few days before they have to go to London for the con, the last one in a while.

He's sad to say goodbye to the house, but before they lock up, they roll the Dalek into John's walk-in closet and rig the door with a string, so that when he opens it the light on the eyestalk will activate. Darcey eats one of their throw pillows and so they toss that in the bin and leave a tenner with the word 'IKEA' written on it in biro. Gareth almost leaves his book of lyrics again, and Gemma waves it in his face as they walk out to the car. 

"Forgetting something?" 

He snatches it and tosses it in the backseat. Hopefully Maynard won't care too much for it. 

He doesn't think about John again until he's roaming the halls of the con, messing with his handler (a serious nerd, they always are) and he hears John's laugh tumble out of a room they've just passed. The hallway is fairly deserted and he stops, backpedals and pokes his head in in time to see John spray a can of something on Scott, who is brandishing a plush Dalek. 

It is not the first time Gareth has walked in on the second act of the Scott and John show. 

" _Now_ you've made him all wet," Scott says, and brushes his hand through his hair, gesturing with the Dalek with the other. The stalk does look suspiciously dripping. 

" _That!_ " John points at the Dalek, accusatory index finger and the eyebrows stuck to the middle of his forehead with superglue. "That is what it looked like. With bunny ears. _Bunny ears!_." 

"They can't send you pussy every time." 

"It was pussy, Scott. That's the _point_!" John's voice carries through the hall, the dramatic spin and turn, the pouncing steps. 

Scott shakes out the wet Dalek, side-stepping the droplets and fumbles something from around its neck. "With love." He advances on John again, Dalek held in front of him, the stalk going for John's eyeball. "It wants your love, John." Scott glances to the table, the few staff members still milling about, cleaning up, even John's handler is standing to the side and wringing her hands, then he repeats in a lousy imitation of a Dalek voice. "Love. Me." 

John's high-pitched wail of drag queen hysteria makes everyone turn. He pants through the attention as he backs away from Scott who follows every step, waggling the Dalek in his face. "No. More. Gay. Eat. Me." 

"Take it away! Take it away from me!" John's yell turns muffled as the Dalek catches him across the mouth. Gareth isn't sure if he imagines the squishing sound. He doesn't imagine the spluttering and flailing hands as John fights the plushie pressed to his nose, stalk messing with his hair. "It's evil!" John says. 

Scott rolls his eyes and smacks John with the Dalek one last time. "This was a gift!" he tuts, and John snorts. _Smack_. John throws the can and runs to the craft table, dodging someone who looks like Kate Mulgrew. Gareth leans against the wall and wonders why Scott pretends that he hates this when he is _so very much_ the willing accomplice. 

Scott catches John around the corner of the services table and hits him square in the face. "LOVE YOUR FANS," he mock shouts, and then turns just in time to catch Gareth's eye. One of his hands flies back and thumps against John's chest and then _John's_ eyes follow the line of sight. 

Oh shit, Gareth realises, he's been spotted. 

"You!" John says as he sees him and raises an accusatory finger. "We need to have words!" 

Gareth is afraid whenever John says they need to 'have words'. The last time they'd had words, Gareth had drunk four vodka tonics (by accident) and almost booted on the craft services table, all because John wanted to talk about his death scene. The first time he and John had ever 'had words', it had been about the CPR scene in the cybergirl episode. He might have ended up soused after that one, too. 

So he leans against the doorframe, gives his handler the 'just a minute gesture' and smiles. "Words, is that what you're calling it these days?" 

John rips the Dalek from Scott's hands and throws it at him, but it goes wide and hits his handler in the face. After a few seconds of shocked silence and then guffawing from John, everyone's laughing, handler included, and Scott's eyes are rolling as John hugs the handler and says "I'm so sorry! You're all wet!" in between high pitched giggles. 

Gareth is grateful for the distraction, because he's afraid that John is going to yell at him (as much as he yells about anything when he's not really upset) for not coming to the show in the last few days (Gemma went, actually. He was puking his guts out. He wants to say it had been a virus, con crud, yeah, but he'd been hungover majorly). He wants to lie actually and say that he saw John, and that he was fabulous, but he doesn't quite know what specifics John might ask or comment on, and god forbid he mention Zaza's green dress in the third number and find out later that it had been aubergine. 

So he's grateful for the respite so that he can gather his wits and say," I know I missed your show, man, I'm sorry—" 

John tilts his head and frowns, and Gareth realises that he hadn't even been thinking about it. Instead he pulls Gareth in for a hug that's a little more than—oh yeah, sensitive bits touching there, oops—and then his lips tickle Gareth's ear and he says something that Gareth doesn't hear because he's thinking about the fact that he might be getting hard. Fucking Barrowman and his full body hugs. Arse. 

It takes forever to pull away, Gareth can see Scott at the craft table eyeing them minutely while mumbling something to someone who looks like Warren Ellis. Oh fuck, he's getting all hand-grabby with a man in front of Warren fucking Ellis. 

John keeps him at arms length for a few seconds, and Gareth can see for the first time in months that the show has done John good. He's thinner, more toned, weight gone from his face, looks more like season one Harkness. Aging backwards a little. Hair still fantastic, really, eyes amazing, but then again, they always were. 

He told Gemma once that he doesn't have a mancrush. It's just John, really, and that's tied up in a bunch of shit he doesn't have to explain to Gemma, because she understands. He thinks she might be a little in love with John, too. 

Not that he's in love with him. That's just fucktarded. 

John gives him a critical eye. "You look like shit." One of his hands squeezes Gareth's shoulder, a little roll of the fingers until the tips press into the area just above his shoulder blade in the back. One thumb runs along the edge of his clavicle. It's a Jack manoeuvre, really, one of the gestures John does when he's getting into character, which usually takes about three cups of tea and some Tim-Tams. 

"Thanks." Gareth pats John's shoulder, the universal sign of 'you can let go now', but he isn't surprised when John just slides his hands up Gareth's neck to ruffle his hair. 

"You scared the shit out of Rhys yesterday," John says, dancing back and retrieving the Dalek from its final resting-place under a folding chair. "He opened the door to the closet at the house and—" 

"Oh shit," Gareth says, hitting his face. "Fuck." 

Scott hands him a cold can of Coke and smiles. "You can't surprise a man with a personal assistant." Then he presses his other cold unopened can against the back of John's neck, and the man yelps. "Unless you seize the moment." 

John grabs the can and rolls his eyes. "Bitch." He taps the top of the can aimlessly, lost in thought. "Though, he is right." 

Gareth snorts and opens his can, and his handler finishes mopping his face with a wad of paper towels. "Mister David—" 

Gareth shrugs. "I think we have a thing. You have a thing—" 

John opens the can and glances at his own handler. "It's our thing." He shrugs. "Wanna snog for the crowd?" 

Gareth sighs. "I suppose. Old times." 

They follow the handler from the room and down the hallway, thankfully one of the closed off ones, so no one sees when Scott gooses Gareth. Arse. Gareth is fairly sure that he doesn't mind, and even if he did, Scott could beat the stuffing out of him. On the other hand— 

Nope. 

"So you have to tell us how you did it, because I am so doing that to Carole next time." John throws an arm around Gareth's shoulders. "I want to see if I can get her to piss herself." His face sobers. "She keeps making jokes about older men and incontinence." 

The sound of the crowd is getting louder and they have to be closer to the general lanes, so his handler gives them the 'wait here' signal at one clear corner and goes on ahead, like some military scout, looking for a path clear of guests so they can get to the room intact. 

"Oh god, Carole is going to blame me," Gareth mumbles and Scott's arm goes around him from the other side, smile incandescent, like he's switched teeth with John. Nope. They just have those kinds of teeth. 

"You know, you keep this up, and the Barrowman clan will adopt you." 

Gareth sighs, but it's for show. He's an actor.

***

John is never off, but it still smacks Gareth over the head every time how _on_ he is when they are on stage and John gets to play to an audience. If there is a sense of melancholy of this being the last ever, maybe, then Gareth doesn't notice it. They play, he delivers his tirade of, 'Yeah, I'm dead' and then they're done amidst applause and body parts and it feels like just after season two aired and they were celebrating a show, even if they avoided the snog for the crowd.

John and Kai do the 'THERE'S GOING TO BE MORE TORCHWOOD' deal, and the crowd goes bonkers. He half wants to get on the net tomorrow and read the whining and squealing. 

Gareth's saved John's 'I hate this,' texts sent in low moments as they did Children Of Earth. He should delete them in case he loses his phone like he keeps losing his diary, cross that out, lyrics book, just to avoid seeing them splashed across a tabloid spread or in an email to Russell c/o BBC. 

He hasn't saved the other texts from set days. 

Well, maybe. Blackmail material. 

Well, Gemma's saved them after he'd sent them on to her, probably. He hasn't checked her phone in months now after she'd shut his own door in his face and left him out on the street in Newport in autumn, it was raining, thank you very much, the last time. He's learnt his lesson. 

That, and the other one. They're not at the point where that one's a joke yet. 

Scott is entertaining himself chatting to Gavin and Rhys while Gareth stands with Gemma, and maybe he should apologize to the poor sod, while John is pulling smiles out for an insistent fan and a hug and even a photo, for free. She's crying, clearly overwhelmed, John's patting her hand, hugging her again for goodbye before he walks over and everyone turns to the man who calls the action. 

"You," John says as the handlers lead them away from cameras and fans trying to get a glimpse of honest gossip. "Are having a drink with us tonight?" No, yeah, it's still a question. 

He and Gemma had planned to sort out the flat, do laundry, that kind of thing before he's up for Preston. 

Gareth smiles and waits for John to go on, he usually does, but Gavin catches his attention about some plans. Gemma slips her hand into his, sure enough there's a fan lurking somewhere, he grins, brushes his thumb over the back of her hand. Scott sidles around to her side and they seem to pick up a conversation from earlier, something about planting trees and gifting chickens and harvesting cows, so that Gareth is stuck between the conversations. 

Gavin disappears with a wave and a hug to John and Scott, a handshake for him and Gemma, Rhys on his heels. 

"Anyway, drinks, us, tonight." John waggles his eyebrows and gone is the question mark. 

"I am?" He clears his throat. "We are?" 

"I want to hear that story about--" and for a moment Gareth thinks he's going to mention Dragon*Con, even if John a) probably doesn't know and b) wouldn't be that much of an arse, "--what's it you were doing? Sherlock Holmes? _With a dinosaur_?" John laughs his arse off. 

"Shouldn't have told him about that one," Scott says from the other side of Gemma, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he watches John lean against a wall, fist beating against it in joyful rapture. Patience of a saint. "Carole found the photo and showed him." 

"Shit." Gareth rolls his eyes at Gemma, she laughs, squeezes her fingers around him. 

"Your panto, when do you have to..." Scott trails off, leaving the question hanging. 

"Preston, next week, yeah." Gareth runs a hand through his hair, not sure yet how he'll deal with four weeks of making children laugh that usually run away intimidated when they see him down on the street in Newport hanging with mates. That or they bum a cigarette off him. He glances at Gemma. They haven't talked about kids, well, she hasn't. He's tried. 

"So drinks!" John shouts from across the hallway and pulls the plush Dalek from the front pockets of his hoodie, the checkered shirt underneath, waggling it around with Dalek noises. John's idea of drinks is vodka tonics, not pints. "Innebriate," he grinds out as he slam dunks the plushie into a bin. Gareth can't blame him; it's ruined, and also getting increasingly sticky. 

"Gem?" Gareth asks, she nods, shrugs at him, probably hoping that another night might air out his place a bit more. 

When he agrees he doesn't even consider that John is thinking of Sully, and then it's too late to back out, and he supposes they would have made for Newport anyway without this, what's another thirty minutes on the M4. Gemma puts on Tool in their car, that's his girl, and he gets lost a bit in that. 

They don't talk much about anything important, odds and ends and dates and family get-togethers, and then- 

"What's that about _harvesting cows_ that you and Scott talked about?" 

The explanation takes 20 minutes and he can't stop laughing

***

He's half expecting the Dalek to be in the foyer waiting for them, or out in the front lawn, a pair of John's boxers on the eyestalk. Some days Gareth thinks that they should get John a small flagpole for his lawn and a flag to raise, maybe one with a TARDIS on it. A flag covered in sequins. Nerd.

But the street is quiet, except for the very dull hum of a stereo that gets louder as they walk up to the door. Something Kai used to blast. Fucking Oasis. 

John pulls Gareth into the foyer, Gemma in tow and grabs him by the shoulders. "You have to stop him. It's been on for the last twenty minutes." His eyes are wide. Gareth isn't sure what he's talking about, and more importantly, he can tell by the sarcastic tone of John's voice that he's only partially serious. John's Jack Russell is going wild around their legs, the other dogs barking alternately at them, John and the music from inside. 

"Sooooooooooooooooo Sally can waiiiiiiiit, sooooooomething—" Scott sings from the kitchen, and now Gareth gets it. 

"What did you do?" he asks John. 

John looks to Gemma and she smirks and shrugs, as if to say, 'These are your gay ass friends,' and Gareth knows that he's on his own with this one. She bends down to pet the dogs instead. 

"Oh something about pop music sucking," John says, waving a hand dismissively. Then over his shoulder at the kitchen, "THIS IS NOT MUSIC!" 

"DOON'T LOOOOK BACK IN AAAAAANGER!" Scott screams, and John laughs into his hands. Gemma snorts. Gareth knows that she's totally fronting, because she has this song on her iPod; he knows because he stole it for part of the flight, and then made fun of her musical selections until she called him a cunt and quoted some of his old band's lyrics at him. Yeah, something about cats being gray in the dark. 

John turns (more twirl and kicked heel) and they follow him back to the stereo and Scott and a massive selection of cocktails. Well, four, but really, who needs four different pitchers of cocktails? 

Scott is measuring a red liquid into a glass pitcher, eyes riveted to the ml lines. John gestures, uses a remote to turn down (but not off) the music and waggles his fingers. "I don't have to be on stage tomorrow. At all. Or the day after. I am getting wasted." He stirs one of the pitchers with a glass rod, making figure eights in the alcohol. He crouches for CJ, letting his face be licked, then lifts CJ's paws for a mock celebratory dance while Harris has taken to Gareth's ankles for a cuddle. 

Oh god, this is going to be worse than the wrap party. 

Gemma opens her handbag as John jostles Scott, urges him to put in more vodka. 

"It doesn't make it taste better," Scott replies, glaring John down. 

"But it makes it so much sexier," John says in turn, face an inch from Scott's. 

Scott smirks, turns on his heel and takes the vodka bottle with him to thrust back into the freezer. John turns to Gareth and Gemma in 'did you see that?'. "It's my party!" 

Gareth smiles broadly. Oh yes. This would be fun. Gemma presses something into his hand, and he pulls it out from behind his back in sodden, santa-like joy and plunks it down on the counter. He imagines the squelch. Surely. 

"Beer?" Gareth asks Scott, stepping around the drinks. Sure he doesn't mind the cocktails, but he needs something else first. Scott gestures to the fridge. 

"You shouldn't have!" John exclaims and pokes at the plush Dalek with the glass stirrer. There go the germs. The Dalek topples and John coos over it. 

Gareth opens the beer, takes a deep pull. Gemma hasn't been around them that much. The wrap party, a few things but he still calls them his friends or, friends. Or--yeah. He walks back to her, slinging an arm around her, pressing a beer-flavored kiss to the side of her neck. She draws her hand through his hair indulgently. It's the 'pat-pat' for no untoward behavior at the con. He's been good. 

"You should be wearing a dress!" John turns on Gareth a second later, straw in his mouth, sucking the orange liquid in the glass up and empty. 

Gareth snorts. "I'd look rubbish. As you know." 

"Ohh," Scott mouths from over there in the kitchen and Gareth feels Gemma's eyes on him. 

"Not like that," he amends, half-hearted and half-chuckling. John reaches over and switches out his beer for one of the cocktails. Gareth takes a sip and that kicks hard. Judging by Scott's grin it's not quite accidental and makes him want to sing along to shitty Oasis. Gemma is leaning into him; this starts Preston really, with only the two of them and the band for a day or two, no fans, only another hotel room. He wonders when he realised that part of being a celebrity was living out of a suitcase with a broken wheel and hotel rooms that smelled like stale smoke and whose bedspreads probably had more invisible come shots on them than his scrotty duvet at home. 

Gemma nips from his cocktail even after his protesting sound has made it out and merged with Scott's pitying laugh. Glare of death, but then Gemma has her own red liquid of something something and her hand slides down his back and into the backpocket of his jeans, fingernails scratching through the denim. Gareth pushes into the touch like Maynard begging for a rub. John reaches over to ruffle his hair; Gemma chuckles into his ear. She tells him how John wants to do him while she's blowing him sometimes. That's the same laugh, the 'I know you' before her lips tighten and he claims later that he's sick of her distraction tactics. Then he falls asleep and dreams of John's cock. Gemma gets to hear all about that over breakfast as he suckles on sausage. 

John claps his hands, calling the court to attention that's been distracted away from him for too long. CJ barks, the other two join in until John shushes them. Scott snorts and ladles more of the cocktail into his own glass as he leans over and whispers something to Gemma, too low for Gareth to understand as John practically bellows in his ear in what's supposed to pass for seductive. "I have the night off!" 

Pregnant pause. 

Gareth nods earnestly, always better to play along, or you'd suddenly find yourself in a closet because your lips twitched funny. Glasses clink behind his back, as he turns to check Scott turns his face to the front again with a small slap to his cheek. There, be a good boy. Gemma giggles and the hand removes itself from the pocket of his jeans. 

"I--" John begins again and his voice travels through several octaves. "Am going to have a good time." 

Gareth sips his drink. That was anticlimatic. 

John looks at him, expectantly, so Gareth nods, not daring to look away. A hand plucks his drink from him and presses a new one into it. Gareth waits for John to do something else, a dance number, a song, to run and pull out all the dresses and spread them in a circle of hidden delights, but John just looks at him through the fuck-me glasses that had all the women in the queue wet themselves. 

"You're not drunk yet," John finally declares. 

"Working on it," Gareth says, holding up his drink and takes a healthy sip, then, spluttering, turns to Gemma, who is red-faced from holding laughter in and Scott who is too calm and level and fucking smirking as he leans against the fridge. 

"It's only vodka," Scott says, smiles. "Well, a lot of it. Vodka gay." 

"I'm not going to ask." 

"Cream," Scott offers despite Gareth very much not asking, thank you, and the milky white swirls in the glass now as he stares at it. 

"It looks like come," John says with a titter from somewhere else in the room before Oasis blasts from the speaker too fucking loud. _Rock 'n Roll Star_ with John Barrowman on lead vocals is ridiculous, and, as he looks over his shoulder, even John can't make that work. 

His drink does look like jizz. 

Gemma has her arm around Scott's waist, head buried against his shoulder and laughing her arse off at his expression. Something pushes past Gareth's ear, nuzzling into his hair, stiff and sticky and spiky and- 

"Love. Us," John intones in Dalek. 

"Oh fuck off," Gareth gives back and downs the remaining vodka from his glass, pulling a face. It hits his throat, then stomach. He sways. 

John takes that one step closer, pressed to his back, cock pressed to his arse, how predictable as he wriggles with a girlish giggle. He slings one arm around Gareth's chest, Dalek tugged under Gareth's chin. "You're getting there." He laughs into Gareth's ear, fingers fondling at his jaw as he turns his face to look at Gemma and Scott, cats and cream. John's glasses dig into the side of his face, and he makes him dance in a halting, 'hand holding onto counter' slow dance. To fucking Oasis. 

Not quite sure how, but John holds another glass up to his lips, and Gareth drinks it down as John tips it. Heat, pooling, and he wants to fuck Gemma over the counter for this and for making him think of John's cock. It's her bloody bedtime stories. 

He's not going to have gay sex. He's not Ianto Jones. 

And anyway, Ianto's dead.

***

Gareth falls asleep on the sofa in the great room, in front of the quiet TV, and when he comes to, John's face is on the telly, larger than life. He starts and is about to curse when he realises that the BBC is just running that stupid episode of _My Family_ , as if they knew and were waiting for this moment to scare the shite out of him. He's by himself, and crazily enough, the cocktail glass (Screaming Welshman, John had said, something Scott had got off the internet after Torchsong) in his hand still upright and only half empty.

He'll never admit that John's woman cocktails have hair, but in the bigger picture, it feels like a supporting detail to a bigger argument, like when he had to write persuasive papers back in school. 

No one is around. Charlie is curled at his side on the sofa, but the younger ones, Harris and CJ, are nowhere in sight. Even more conspicuous by their absence are all of the two-legged creatures that he'd been with earlier. He's fairly sure that if they had all decided to go to bed, Gemma would have woken him up or put a coverlet on him, she's that kind of girl, yeah, but he's there in his socks and jeans and shirt, shivering a little because the glass walls of the room make the room colder even though they are most assuredly insulated within an inch of their lives. 

He can't not watch John, for a second, on the telly. Then he downs the rest of the cocktail, and gets more just in case it's bedtime after, and no one is there to watch him drink more of the girl stuff anyway. With frills. The near-empty bottle of vodka stands on the counter next to the fridge. He considers it briefly, but the red, it beckons with colour. 

There's giggling coming from down the hallway, authentic giggling, and he can hear Gemma's throaty laugh, the kind that makes him think of the fact that she doesn't have a gag reflex, and over all of it, the occasional bark of John's surprised and delighted exclamations. 

"Oh my darling, you are _fabulous_!" 

Now _that_ is John. 

He pads down the hallway, Charlie finally as roused as he is and wending around his ankles, and they stop in front of the doorway and he presses on the painted wood, telling himself that entering the lair of the Barrowman-Gill bedroom isn't bad when there's a woman in there. 

It's…not a strange sight, actually, as much as it probably should be. Scott is lying lengthwise across the bed, buried in and lounging on piles of cloth and pillows and feathers, tonnes of feathers in different colours. A long strip of sequined cloth is tied about his forehead like he's queer Rambo, and he's wearing a hideous pair of Elton John sunglasses. CJ is wrestling with a ratty plush banana by his knees. 

Gemma turns towards him from the open closet, and he has to stop, set his glass down on the dresser. Where her clothes are, he hasn't the faintest, and he's not sure he cares, because she's got this…thing on, this white thing that he knows from the La Cage pics on the 'net, all that white sequins fringe slapping her thighs like little pervy tongues. Her tits are bigger than John's fake ones, so they barely fit in the dress, cleavage pushed up like a Newport whore. 

"Oh," is all he manages to get out, because Scott grins at him and stretches one of his feet out to dust Gemma's thigh, and she winks at him. Her hip juts out a little, saucy, sure, what do they call that in the States? Oh yeah, she's got the 'tude, right. He wants to know if she's wearing the silly frillies that go with the dress, yeah, if she's got her knickers on underneath, probably does, no matter how drunk. Gemma always has this underlying current of serious in her, no matter how drunk or high they are. 

He reaches for his drink again because he's going to need it, it and about fifteen more to drug him into alcohol-induced impotence, because Jesus, he'd fuck her in front of them both, right here, on the gay pride feather float bed. 

Scott stretches his arms above his head, and Gemma falls backwards onto the bed next to him. Her hand reaches out to tickle his belly where his shirt has ridden up. 

It's funny. No matter how much of a dog person Gill may be, he's still just a giant cat. In many many ways. Scott picks up a long strand of blue feathers and winds the boa around Gemma's neck, and when she glances at Gareth, her eyes almost pop with the colour. 

"So, this is--" 

"OH MY GOD, IT FITS," comes a cry from the walk-in, where they had installed Dalek Torchwood, and when John comes out he's got on a long green sequined dress, some sort of evening gown that would make Gemma look like…well, like wow. The front is draped (he's pissed that he even knows that word, yeah, fucking women's clothes), and when John turns so that Gemma and Scott can judge him from their lounge on the bed, Gareth sees that the back is so low he can see the swell of John's arse, the part where the spine arches and the dimples show and you can tell that there's nothing under that dress but John himself. 

Gemma whistles low and Scott laughs. "Oh Miss Lopez, how does it feel to win a Grammy?" 

John turns back to them, waves his hands, oh work it, girl, and snaps his fingers before pausing. "You know," he says absently, "I don't remember any J-Lo songs." 

Gareth doesn't want to tell any of them that he knows all the words to 'Get Right', so he just wavers in the doorway, finishing his drink and wondering if he can afford to be seen. Obviously crossdressing isn't a requirement, or Scott would be sporting Zaza gear as well, but it's too close to the talk, when he'd said that he'd do John—no, he'd do Zaza, not John, there's a difference, yeah—and John had wanted to dress him up. Hurricane Barrowman is worse when it's drunk, and if he came at Gareth armed with a truckload of petticoats and a tube of lipstick, Gareth isn't sure that he would emerge unscathed. 

Especially since Gemma would be a willing accomplice. And he doesn't know where her cameraphone is. 

And she's all flirty, this one, _his_ one (because if she can be all possessive in public, hand holding, bitchslapping fangirls, then he can call her his, even if it's just in his thoughts. That street doesn't work both ways out loud.). She claps her hands and says something about shaking that ass, and John complies for a second, swiveling his hips, the same move that seems cheesy when he's in trousers looks hideous in drag. Gareth isn't sure whether he's being serious or not. On the other hand, he can count on one hand the times John's ever been really truly serious. Super serious. Dead serious. 

John falls onto the bed and lands half on Gemma, half on Scott, his face mashed into their shoulders. "Ooooh nice," comes the muffled laugh. "I could fuck you both." 

Anything Gareth might say is cut short when Scott reaches around and smacks John's arse. Gemma wiggles out from under him and sits up, wavering a bit but steadying. "Okay then," Scott says, "it's time for bed." He pushes John off him, so that he flips over, his dress askew and showing his bare chest. "Say good night, John." 

"Good night, John," John mumbles, eyes closed. He turns his head so that his face is nestled in the mound of boas. "Imma sleep here," he slurs, "in my feather bed." 

Scott runs one finger down John's cheek, and for a second Gemma looks at him and Gareth feels like he's intruding on something a thousand times more intimate than the time he'd walked in on John blowing Scott in his trailer. He picks up his drink, collects Gemma on one arm and they stumble to the room next door amidst a few mumbled drunken _night-night_ s. 

It's only when he's downed the rest of the booze and taken off his socks that he realises Gemma is standing in front of him in John's white dress and silly frillies. Her hair is around her shoulders, and mussed, like she just got in from a walk in the wind, and that lipstick she wears, yeah, it's so dark it makes the rest of her face ghostlike. Her fingers dance along the line of the dress at the top, her neckline, or breastline, really, travelling the v down into her cleavage and digging in between the fabric and her skin. She crosses her legs, coy girl, and that's just for him. 

They're guests. 

Their bedroom is right next door. 

A low groan comes through the wall, and _that_ is not indigestion. Gemma raises an eyebrow. "I had fifteen of those red drinks, and Scott," she stops, swaying, one hand trailing down the front of the dress to yank it up so that she can show him the front of the knickers, and the sequins and ruffles, and Jesus, fingers under those to, right to where she's probably wet as fuck. 

"Scott," she continues, "says that he won't give me the recipe." Mouth quirk. "He says you know it." 

Gareth sits bluntly on the bed. Next door there is a sound of thumping and John, it has to be John, grunts. "Yeah, they're called Screaming Welshmen. But I don't know the recipe." 

Gemma pulls the straps to the dress down her shoulders and the whole thing just falls to the floor. Those knickers are tight. He wants her to turn so that he can see her arse stretch the material, rounded and firm, bottom of her cheeks framed by the edging. He wants to smell her through them. 

"Oh, _really_?" 

It takes too many moments until it clicks, drunkenly, somewhere in the back of his brain. Not as dirty when he's drunk. He leans forward and reaches for Gemma, hand curving around her thigh, thumb brushing along the line of the knickers, the small imprint they leave on her skin. He looks up at her from there, she's all sexy and flushed and the knickers tickle against the back of his hand. 

He would have fucked John in this, bent over and the frill barely pushed aside. 

That's too creepy to think about, he's too drunk for that. It makes him want to check for stains and pull a face.  
"Did they wash this before you put it on?" he asks. 

Her face is a little less than pleased when she sticks two fingers in the waistband and mocks fucking herself. "Oh come off it. It's pretty, and you love it, so fuck off." 

Well that's all true. He loves it. The shock of her bottle job hair and the white sequins that hold the rainbow in the light, her manicured nails and her veins under her skin because she's his Welsh girl (not that he has an English girl or a Spanish girl, right? No, just her. Does he think about this too much? Probably.). Her eyes hooded and painted, and her little tongue peeking from between those lips. He pulls her on the bed and thinks that he hasn't performed live in a while. 

It's easy to scrape those panties down, but too regretful to pull them off, so he stops at the knees, so she's lying there, knees locked together, feet splayed like a Maxim girl, and all of his clothing is made of lead: trousers, shorts, socks, thank god there's nothing else because three is his lucky number these days. Something scratches at their door and they both look at it. 

"That little fucker can't come in here," he mutters and the scratching stops. 

Gemma chuckles, yanks the comforter around her shoulders and flexes her toes in the covers, all mussed on the bed, and next door there's a huge succession of bangs on the wall, as if they're trying to fuck their way through it. Any minute John's cock will poke a hole in the plaster. 

Well, he'll just get the dog from the hallway and hang it on there by its mouth. That'll keep everyone busy. 

He's got better things to do, he knows when he smells his way up Gemma's thighs, a little sweaty from all the polyester of the costumes, a little from the friction and heat and his mouth when he can't resist licking his way up there, because yeah, he likes to announce his approach. She's a giggler, always has been, and he likes when he can make those dissolve into surprised upward hitches, like when he lowers his head under her knees and hooks the panties about the back of his neck, so he's _in there_ , and her cunt is everything in his field of vision. 

She has that smell like she's been wearing panties all day, sure Clarky calls it—well, he laughs when Clarky says it, but Gemma wouldn't, and he obviously has no problems with it, but he goes for the surprise approach, the tip of his tongue on her clit when he spreads her lips and tangles his fingers in the hair, then dives in, wants to see how far he can get into her cunt before her knees clench behind him and the heel of one foot lifts and thumps the small of his back. 

Gareth has been going down on women for years, loves to do it, though it's always a crapshoot with a new girl, so he doesn't do it with strangers (or people on sinks), and he's fairly sure that he fell in love with Gemma the first night he spread her legs and sucked on her clit so hard she came in three minutes, screaming his name. Right now she's moaning into her arm, groping behind her for a pillow to throw over her face until he reaches up and pulls it away. 

"This house needs some straight sex," he whispers, then licks the hood of her labia, right there, up at the top, and when she complies with a loud groan and lifts her hips, he slides his hands under her arse so that he can rest his elbows on the bed and just hold her up there. He'd like to fuck her like this, but he's not ready for it yet. His cock is more than ready, but Gareth wants pussy all over his face, a face that John would never want to kiss. 

Gemma pumps her hips in the air. One of her hands travels down to his hair, yanks on it, and he bites as much of her as he can, gently, like when she scrapes her teeth down his cock, they like that, yeah. Next door the moaning gets a little louder, though the knocking has stopped. Round two in the Barrowman-Gill household. Maybe they haven't got to the fucking yet either. Gareth can feel the pounding in his dick and he wishes he could get it sucked while he eats her out, but that's a level of sexual participation that Gemma doesn't do. Maybe after he's got a permanent ring on her finger. 

She's had enough, though she hasn't come, and when she tugs on his hair again, and he can't go any further forward, because his shoulders don't fit through the circle of her thighs held together at the knees with John's magic glitter panties. "Oh," she says in a mock whisper, "showtime." Little quirk of her lips in the moonlight and the floodlights from the back room peeking through the skylight. Oh the skylight. He wants to fuck her centered right under it, so she can see the universe over his shoulder when he's banging her into the mattress, pinning her to the earth. 

He can't find the condoms. Crawling around on hands and feet as he scrabbles for his jeans to search for the pockets makes Gemma giggle, wrapped in a comforter, white panties dangling from one perfect toe. 

"Purse," she says, kicks a pillow at his head. 

He catches her foot in his hands, presses a kiss to the arch. 

A drawn out groan travels through the wall. They stare at each other like kids listening to their parents, then Gareth draws his tongue over her foot, and she giggles again and he laughs, and they put their heads together and it ends in kisses, one for every thump from next door, tongue for every curse word. 

"Purse, condoms," Gemma whispers to him, hand in his hair, lost the sleekness now and only does messy, but he goes easy, presses her back to the bed until she slaps his chest, pulls at his hair. Ow. "Living room, on the sofa, I think?" 

"Fuck." He thinks they should just do it, but she hasn't forgot earlier this year and he can't disagree with her and she won't do it, even if she's on the pill, won't do it without a raincoat, not when he's getting pissed in Draco Malfoy's room and having strange encounters of the fannish kind. 

He stumbles over his jeans, almost falls into the door and out into the hallway. Gemma guffaws, throws a pillow after him, his laughter is stuck somewhere in his chest, throat, somewhere where it makes clicking sounds like some kind of alien language. Click click click. 

Sounds travel louder through doors. He stands there for a second, amidst Gemma's laughter and, "Fuck, Scott!" He snorts too loud, the action inside stops and he pauses, barely suppressing laughter until murmurs come from within and then it picks up again and he continues on. Barrowman crescendos into, "YOU'RE THE MAN!" and they are fucking performing. Performing fucking. Bastards. 

Moon's playing ghost in the living room. Creepy. He crawls around over cold leather sofas and plush ugly pillows and spots the purse, lunges. He doesn't see the DVDs until they topple. CRASH. 

"Fuck." Amidst a sea of musical movies and is that something he doesn't watch and ... _Cars_ , he stands naked, a purse dangling from his hand, playing little boy caught with a hand in girl's undies. He leaves the DVDs, steps around them really and launches the purse at the bed from the door when he's back at the guest room. 

He's lucky it doesn't hit Gemma in the face. But he runs and lands on the bed, dick bobbing eagerly, and he wants to fuck her tits, but the time for that has passed, because she does that saucy thing, the thing he likes, when she rips the wrapper open with her teeth and spits the corner of it off the bed. Her nails scrape the underside of his cock when she puts the condom on, and don't they just live for all that abrasion they cause each other, he thinks shallowly. It's the Newport way, loving jabs and barbs, like when he'd been a kid and the neighbours next door argued nightly and then fucked nightly and he'd hear it banging on his bedroom wall, not unlike— 

Well, all classes of people, he thinks, when John screeches and there is the unmistakable sound of the flat of his palm slapping the drywall. 

He gets to be on top. It's not important most of the time, but it is tonight, because he likes to think that John is a huge nelly bottom, and right now Scott's got his cock jammed into— 

He slides in and thinks about Gemma's tits, opens his eyes to see them, and she pulls him in for a kiss, she likes his 'cunt kisses', she says, then licks his cheek and whispers, "Shave tomorrow," in his ear, and he could never say no, not when he's prick-deep in her and she does that thing, the thing where she says, 'stop' and as they freeze there she _flexes_ and it feels like a ripple all along his cock. 

"Fuck," he says, and pulls her up by the underarms so that he can sit her up against the headboard and lift her into his lap when he kneels. Partial-wall fucking. Hand slap to the paint. She reaches behind her to grasp the headboard so that it bonks even more loudly against the wall, and they get a return slam from the other side. 

Duelling headboards. 

"You know...John's parents...sleep in this...bed...when they're here," Gareth says into her ear as he pushes his cock into her again and again. And she just smiles and whispers something about 'oh, grandpa,' and he can't even be turned off when that dissolves into chuckling and then a huge hitch when his fingers find her clit and he fucks her, cock and fingers and thumb on her clit in circles, because he can pat his head and rub his belly at the same time. For good measure, he slams the headboard again. 

"OH GOD FUCK!" John screeches, almost hitting a musical note there, and Gemma bites her lip and then pulls Gareth down to nip at his ear lobe. They are neither of them going to do much screaming, not really. John and Scott are probably both over there fully-clothed, jumping on the bed and laughing, and Gareth and Gemma are the ones getting off on it, like playing a porno in the background, even though you know it's acting, it's still hot. 

"Do you think they're fucking?" Gemma whispers. 

"Do you care?" he pants, and she forces him to stop again, makes him pull out, and he's dying here, because just the lower temperature of the room is like dousing him with cold water. All of a sudden he can feel the sweat on his skin cooling, and she turns quickly, presenting that arse, round and soft and Jesus, she gives it a wiggle, tosses that hair over her shoulder, and spreads for him, one hand reaching back for his cock, grabbing the condom and tugging the whole thing forward like a kid with a wagon handle. 

Rearrangement takes about one-point three seconds and then her breasts are mashed against his hands, pressed to the wall. He can bite her neck now, and she presses a big kiss to the paint, leaving a mark, their mark, right there on the satin finish, if they could leave cock and tit prints on it, they would, but she slams the flats of her hands on the wall above her head and he thrusts over and over, a little rhythm that says, 'Sorry my girl, but the window of control is done.' Her grinding and pushing shows that she understands and she braces her hips so that he can really force it. He plays with her nipples in one hand, they're big and hard and he wants to suck them, but there never seems to be an anatomically correct position for all of the things he wants to do for her at once. 

Her palm slaps the wall, right where they keep hearing noises from the other room, and at one point just before Gareth comes, she's got a beat with the person on the other side, like they're playing drums to each other from the inside out. 

He screams that one time, right when he comes, and she does too, but they make it good. They always do when it matters. 

The silence of them falling down onto the bed, legs and arms askew. He thinks to crack the door for the dogs, but that would require him putting clothes on, because an open bedroom door here seems like a stenciled invitation for company, canine or human, and he doesn't want John pouncing on them at nine in the morning, trowelling under the covers and coming up with handfuls of their naked flesh. That's not conducive to maintaining anyone's domestic bliss, if there is any to be had, so he flops over on his back and yanks the rubber off, aiming for where he thinks the bin might be. It was by the door, right? Some liner-draped metal IKEA monstrosity. He doesn't hear it hit, but close enough. Another reason he doesn't want John shimmying into their room in the morning. 

One of the dogs barks. The door next door opens, padding steps, whispered conversation, then, some plastic and hollow knocks about against a plaster wall, and a cuss. Gareth smiles into the arm over his face. Gemma rolls onto her side away from him. He thinks about humping the cleft of her arse in a few hours, coming all over the small of her back, all over the dark blue Barrowman-Gill guest room sheets, saved for parents and sisters. 

"I hate when you leave the water bowl out here." John. Hah. 

Then a mumbled reply from Scott, and the slap of hand on skin, something about bed, and steps make it back to the room. 

Gareth can't sleep. Gemma's snoring. He drinks the dredges of his drink and sets the glass on the nightstand in a skid of glass on polished wood. Hides his face in the pillows. Aw man, he wants one of the ugly throw pillows to cuddle. 

He should have kept the one Darcey chewed, so he could have it at home. Maybe this week he'll go online and buy a couple from the store, have them shipped directly to his flat. Nah. Wouldn't be the same, paying for them right and proper. He wants to filch one from here.

***

"You dropped the rubber on the carpet."

He expects the sun to be dialed to eleven when he cracks his eyes open, but it's just sun, no pain. Gareth blinks to sunlight and Gemma standing over him with swollen eyes and wild hair and naked, he wants to do her again, now before breakfast or whatever it is. 

She throws the condom she's stepped onto at his chest and disappears in the ensuite. 

He needs a piss. Better find the other bathroom. 

Three seconds out the bedroom door and it's, "--I married you for your dick." 

Oh man, not the kind of conversation Gareth wants to walk into, so, boxershorts clinging to his cock, he stops opposite the kitchen doorway and tries to slip into the bathroom undetected. Just then John's shout rings out. 

"WE DON'T CALL IT MARRIAGE!" Something slaps skin, then a plastic cup sails across the tiles and crashes into Gareth's ankle, a dog hot on its feet, little paws barely stopping it in mid-motion before it slides into Gareth's legs. 

John sticks his head out through the kitchen door, staring at him. Gareth picks at his shirt and narrows his eyes at him. 

"Coffee?" 

"You're not really that cheerful, are you?" 

Scott pushes past John, deliberately jostling him in the process, and carries his cup into the living area. "He's an ahc-toahr." Scott rolls his eyes. The dogs run after him. Gareth stares back at John, then disappears into the bathroom. The door doesn't slam. Much. 

"I'M BRINGING HOME THE MONEY!" John shouts on the other side of the door as Gareth wants to stick his head under the faucet and drown himself. "IT PAYS FOR THE FLATSCREEN IN THE BATH!" 

"You're bringing home the people who stare at us through the patio doors," Scott gives back before said patio doors presumably snick open and shut again as his words cut off on the last one. 

"OH WHATEVER. YOU'D THROW YOURSELF INTO A STRIPTEASE IF THEY WERE FIT BLOKES!" There must be a gesture because John doesn't stop there. "WHO ALMOST GAVE THEM OUR MOBILE NUMBERS?" 

The door must be opened again, dogs going in and out, because before he starts to mess with the water he hears Scott, in an almost perfect mimicry of John's fake shouting. "THAT WAS THE NUMBER TO DOMINO'S." The finality of glass and a door seal, and John mumbles on the other side of the bathroom door, something about naive being Evian spelt backwards. 

Gareth looks up at the flatscreen telly. He likes it. He'd turn it on, but fucked if he wants to see a loop of Best of Barrowman or whatever shit John has programed to play on repeat. 

"You have to turn on the telly, Gaz!" John's knocking on the door. Bump bump. 

Gareth turns the shower on full instead, lets it run as he shrugs out of his clothes and throws himself under it. Good, gorgeous water. The flat screen is staring at him, accusingly dark and dead, through the door of the shower, water sluicing off clear glass. Fucker. He squints at the assortment of bottles on the shelf and goes for the closest. It gives him only a small moment's pause that he'll run around smelling like he showered with John for the day, but knowing Gemma she'll sniff out his neck at random intervals and try to convince him to shag in their laundry room later. That's good, he can live with that. He stays under the water longer than necessary because it comes out with more than the dribble that his own shower produces and he's holding out some hope here it will wake him up proper.

John is singing in the kitchen. That wakes him up proper. He sticks his head under the water one last time, letting it run over his face, then turns off the shower and steps out, cold hard reality hitting with Barrowman's morning serenade.

He eyes the telly again and turns it on, a bit of morbid curiousity, but hits the mute before any sound can escape as he brushes his teeth poor man style: toothpaste and an index finger. Only BBC news, that feels awfully like a let-down and he turns it off again with his elbow to the little button at the side. He promised Gemma a shave, but it'll have to do for now.

Gareth pokes his head out of the bathroom door before letting his body follow, manky boxershorts on again but he's only carrying the sweaty t-shirt. John stares down the hallway at Scott, walking around outside a little aimlessly, staring out at the sea.

"He's not smoking, is he?" Gareth asks. He'd like a smoke right about now. His fingers twitch for the invisible pack in a pocket in a pair of jeans he isn't currently wearing.

"Pensioner's break."

Blink, brain cells not connecting, mayday. What? He squints at John, hoping he's conveying question marks somewhere with his actor talents and shit.

John gives a mock-wistful sigh. "He's play-acting pensioner. It's what he does. Funny, isn't he?"

"You're a nutter." Gareth stares back out at the garden where Scott has turned the aimless wandering to intentioned and bends down and picks up a bottle and two glasses off the deck, flare red label of some kind of flavoured Absolut glinting across the garden.

"Yours?"

John has a self-satisfied grin on his face.

"You shagged on the deck?"

John turns to Gareth. "Coffee?"

"You are screwed in the head." Gareth makes his way down the hallway.

"It was only a blow-"

" _I'M NOT LISTENING, BARROWMAN_!" The doors are heavy enough to slam shut satisfyingly, and he only feels a twinge guilty about throwing someone else's property about.

John has to have the last word. " _PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO SUCK COCK ON THEIR OWN PROPERTY._ "

Getting dressed would have been slightly difficult, but someone, possibly John, probably Scott has been capital enough to fetch their bags from the boot and dump them on the bed. The zip on his is undone and his blue boxers have been restuffed back into it, little corner peeking out. Oh ha, pervy huffers. The ensuite is empty and he steps inside the floral smelling steam room quality of it to comb his fingers through his hair and rethink the Tool t-shirt he's wearing, but for the fact that there will be a joke about his dick in there somewhere, but it's the only clean one he has left, and the jokes about man-smell will be worse. He's slightly concerned that he can even predict John's jokes at this point. Also conspicuous by her absence is Gemma, though he stops wondering when he hears the murmur of her alto coming from the kitchen. The voice that answers her is too soft to be John, so it has to be Scott. 

Gemma and Scott are drinking tea and poring over a laptop on the kitchen counter, indulging in a little Farmville action, no doubt. Gemma raises the mug to her lips absently, and he notes it's one of the ones he bought John in Amsterdam, just after he'd got the wedding invite in the mail. Its block letters declare that "HOME FUCKING IS KILLING PROSTITUTION." 

"Let me get the pink cow... wait." Gemma pulls the laptop around, types, clicks.

"I like that." Scott points at something on the monitor after a moment. "Hey, your daffodils are almost done."

"Another thirty minutes, maybe? Bloody well hate the cows. Thought about selling them."

"Ah they don't make much though." Scott leans back, balancing his cup of tea or, no, yeah, it looks like tea now, against his thigh, watching the mouse move across the screen. Gareth doesn't get it. "Waste of space mostly. Look at that." Scott points, giving a short laugh. "You sure are hoarding the money, aren't you?"

"Do you want more fence?"

Scott murmurs affirmation, then leans closer. "That's some clever stacking." He laughs, that throaty little _I'm impressed and not only humoring you, well, maybe a little_ chuckle in his throat. "Neat."

Gemma preens, and Gareth feels caught between proud and idiotic.

John hands him a cup of coffee and rests his chin on his shoulder, watching the others across the kitchen. "You know when they would be on the set together? And we'd see them waving from across the Plass over at craft services, and they looked so lonely and out of it?" John murmurs. "That's us right now."

Gareth sips from his coffee. It's bad. Made by someone who doesn't know how to do it. John when he's not paying attention, or Scott, because tea drinkers never care enough about coffee to pay attention to the brewing of it. He should have asked for some PG Tips. Oh hell, the craft services shit was worse than this and he drank that by the gallons, had to piss like a race horse too, but still.

"It's _golden_!" Scott is depositing his cup on the table and pulls the laptop around again.

Gemma's fingers are holding on to it. "No, I wanted Janice to get it. She said she-"

"Not if I'm faster." Scott is speaking through Gemma's laughter, all smiles and languid lines, as he spins the laptop to the side, trying to block Gemma from view. She leans across, inching her way in for a glance at the monitor and Scott is making room for her in his private space, and she slips into it, her hair brushing past his ear and catching on a shirt with a polo pony on it. Gareth's sure he's seen that one on John before. He drops one hand from the keyboard and she squeezes in between him and the counter. Her hair draping across his shoulder and hiding them both a little from view, she says something to Scott but turned away now it's too low to make out from across the room, but there's tittering, and a shove and Scott shifts, moves his arm around her for a key press. Her fingers shift over his for a touch-see and reclaiming the keyboard and he has to lean over her shoulder to look at the screen, brushing her hair out of his face.

They'd be slow-dancing, if it wasn't for the laptop and farm sounds coming from the speakers.

So it doesn't surprise him that even this early in the morning, John is touchy feely, fingers on his shoulders, cheek against his neck, probably for Scott, when he looks over to them. Scott with his hand on Gemma's waist and--suddenly things slot into place for him. John sways a bit, and Gareth thinks about what he could say.

"That was quite a performance you two gave last night." Lips on his ear. "I'm going to have to change the sheets. Everyone's sheets."

That says it then. "She's sexy."

John chuckles, dirty fuck, into his ear and Gareth leans back just enough. "He's sexy as fuck, too, I'd do him. I did him."

"You didn't." Gareth half turns, tries to ting a smile Barrowman-style over his shoulder.

John waggles his eyebrows and then presses his lips to Gareth's, dry-kissing like they were bloody virgins and over in two moments before Scott or Gemma have even turned to them for a round of applause. They're used to that, snogging for the set, and used to the catcalls and flipping the fuck-offs back at the crew. No cheers here.

"I need a smoke," Gareth ventures, nearly clicks his fingers in time to that invisible beat, before John stops them, flattens them out against his jeans.

"Oh no, you don't."

"Oh yes, I do." And when John smiles and opens his mouth to say his line, "Fuck this shit, is this panto?"

John croon-laughs into his ear, like he is much too amused, and then it's another kiss for his dry, bad-coffee-chapped lips, like it's all incidental and they are going to sit down to watch _Cars_ any second and John's going to point out the names of the cars and their gay little faces and John's doing that Jack thing now, that face-cradling thing. Gareth closes his eyes because that's what you do, and flushes when John pulls back and he opens them again and there are still no cheers; Scott is saying something about _Oh my_ God _, it's a kitten!_ and Gareth blinks like an idiot at John, who drinks his shit coffee with a smug grin.

"They'd both watch," John says into his ear, warm breath and coffee flavour. Gareth tries to put down his cup somewhere before pre-smoke jitters make it crash and it would kind of destroy the moment but John won't let him, sways him away from any kind of surface. "She'd love that, you think? Yeah. I know Scott would."

Gareth can't turn his head because John's face is right there, so he's looking at Scott's arm around Gemma and then she's turning and whispering something in his ear that makes him guffaw, her lips brushing his ear shell. Then turning back to the monitor, her hair plays around him, and as she takes over tapping at keys, his fingertips curl into it at her side, hand resting at her waist, just playing with it like Gareth does when it's him and her in bed. Scott lets it unroll from around his fingertip to point at something on the screen.

"Crazy they belong to us, huh?" John says. Gareth's never quite thought John to think in possessives like that but right now, yeah, it fits the bill, and more than an outsider looking into a private moment, this feels like privilege as Scott's fingers settle on Gemma's waist again, thumb playing over the top she's wearing. It spills her tits, that top does, and maybe Scott checks that out. They look like the people from the television now, while John and he watch. It's all domestic and hetero, but not; as Rhys would say in his DJ voice, 'flip the script on that, yo'.

"You're not going to do all your harvesting now?" Gemma's voice goes one octave lower, and Gareth thinks an attribution for that, it's Gemma's 'don't play me, boy' R&B voice, but John's fingers are dancing over his side in mimicry of Scott's on Gemma's waist, like they are being mirrored in a double-seduction. Gareth finds he doesn't mind much.

"Not all of it," Scott says to the screen, then chances a look at Gemma, and turns to the screen again, clicking, while his fingers are back playing with her hair over her shoulder and fingertips inching to the nape of her neck as he brushes her hair away while he goes on about strawberries and potatoes.

It's her who presses a kiss, the smallest of ones, to Scott's neck. John gasps next to Gareth's ear, for once not a theatre-level of noise, more private inhalation. Scott turns to her, glances back at John and at Gareth, and leans in and presses his lips to hers, an almost accidental brush before he clicks on the laptop and she turns his face back around and a kiss to his jawline and a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Scott's fingers move from the nape of her neck, and he circles Gemma's mouth and Gareth knows that she fancies him because she said something once about his gorgeous arms. Gemma's a sucker for arms, really, Gareth has nice ones, or he did before. They're a little out of shape now, but he thinks when he watches John's husband kiss his fiancee--no no, John's GAY husband kiss his fiancee, he thinks that he could start working out again after Preston. The winter months aren't going to be kind to him, lots of lying about and waiting for cues and--John's hand on his jeans and another hand to set down the coffee.

"You tell me that you haven't thought about it," comes a whisper in his ear, "and I'll tell you how brown your eyes are."

John and those Americanisms. "Haven't."

"Liar."

John kisses him again, for that chaste meeting of lips that is nothing much, and with his eyes open and locked with Gemma's. Gareth leaves his lips where they are, watching her and Scott and those fingers mapping out fabric over the skin. He's not sure what they're playing at, kissing maybe. Just kissing for the moment. John turns his face to watch them, and he can feel in John's legs that he's trying to get him to dance in tune to something in his head, but it's too early for that.

He wants to ask about that old joke, 'gay from the waist up', and does it flip the script too, straight from the waist up, gay from the waist down. Scott's hand is on Gemma's waist and John's fingers are playing with the hem of Gareth's shirt, and he thinks that he's been thinking a bit too much for someone who hasn't had coffee yet, not really, not enough, so maybe it's fake thinking. He sways with John, John who wants to do a little dance but is too distracted watching Scott eye him as he nuzzles the fall of Gemma's hair, watching Gemma's eyes flit from one to the other to the other, as if she can tie all their thoughts together and interpret them, like mixing red and blue and yellow to get a new paint colour. Mud, muddy, muddled.

Gareth finally presses himself into John's front, dancing him backwards, because no matter what he says about being quick and agile, John can be startled on his feet, and when he steps back to keep his balance, maybe start the foxtrot, he makes a face and looks down, taking Gareth's eyeline with him as well, and the plush Dalek is squished under his foot.

"Symbolic." John laughs.

Gareth snerks and Gemma and Scott peer over the counter to see the thing as John kicks it across the room and CJ races after it. Soon it will be mincemeat. Mince Dalek.

"You know symbolism?" Gareth jokes, because he likes to jab. He mocks because he cares.

John dives for his face, but he doesn't kiss him, just pulls him taut, lines him up so that he can feel everything, _everything_ all the way down to John's knees. "Mmm. I know sex symbols." Little shimmy. "Gay sex symbol." He pauses. "Didn't you win an AfterElton award or something for that?" Humming in his ear, hand at his waist, the other on his wrist as he holds the coffee mug. Gemma is smirking into Scott's chest as she rests her cheek against it, and Scott's face is enigmatic when he smiles into her hair. 

"Favorite gay character," Gareth murmurs and then in defiance of everything, curls his arm so that he can sip from his mug, nonchalant. _No no, who? John Barrowman? Attached to my front? You don't say._ He doesn't add that Ianto wasn't gay, it's a battle he doesn't have to fight anymore and he never really cared anyway. You know, there are people who get the whole 'gay for someone' thing, and people who don't get the fence straddling and people who will always think that Jack and Ianto were in _wuv_. 

He wonders how long they'll leave him flowers. 

"And I didn't win," he adds. It's only fair to point out the obvious. John doesn't follow that shit. He didn't either until someone had emailed him the link.

John pulls back when Gareth sips from the mug, makes the pouty face, but not the exaggerated one he does for the cameras when he knows the pic is going in the book or a paper somewhere. "Awww. Did you get anything? You should at least get a t-shirt for a thing like that." His eyes cut down to the TOOL lettering in front of him, and Jesus, Gareth knew it would come up. But it doesn't. Just John lowering his wrist and thus his cup from his mouth, controlling the path of the coffee mug to the counter, then sliding up to release Gareth's fingers from it. They both watch those hands thread together, Scott swaying Gemma in his arms, the hand of hers that Gareth can see tucked into Scott's back pocket.

"No t-shirt," he whispers, and that's the movie moment right there, John's lips part, the music swells and the kiss isn't dry at all, isn't too wet, it's what they did before, but this time he means it more, he means it like someone else. He sees the movement from the corner of his eye and he tries to look, but John's an all-consuming thing, and he doesn't have to worry about coffee spilling, camera angles and fans, flashbulbs or lighting, just that mouth on his and it's nice, very very nice, now that he has it to himself. He has to come up for air, to see her, what she thinks of all this, but she's not even looking. Damn shame, except that he wasn't even playing to her, not like they're playing to him and John. 

And Scott's one hand is in Gemma's hair, and he kisses her like he's always been kissing girls. Kissing girls isn't different from kissing boys actually, Gareth knows this from experience, but he can't look away, not when it's fascinating and John is so close to him, one of his hands on the back of Gareth's neck, almost cradling his chin and his tongue darts out to lick right behind Gareths' ear before he sings softly, "That's ent-er-tain-ment..." The other hand runs under his shirt and Gareth fleetingly wonders if body hair is a turn off for him or a novelty. John had once said that Gareth had a twink mind in a little bear body, but he'd been taking the piss, and then three minutes later he'd been telling him he loved him right before Ianto karked it.

Gemma's eyes are closing into the kiss, she's playing the romantic lead, and Gareth's staring at them like they are playing a Hollywood couple. John's fingers turn his chin around in turn, and they're doing their own version of it and it's less Jack and Ianto than he thought it would be and, really, more of the same at the same time.

It's like one of those progressions, a chord progression, actually (he's picking up all Rhys's buzzwords to throw around when they're in the studio) to move this to the bedroom. John's eyes are wide and he's serious, serious for once, which means that he's thought about it, he understands it. Scott is always serious except when he's amused, and he probably thinks about this shit all the time. He probably calculated it, made a spreadsheet in his Excel brain and laid it out in a presentation for John one night after a few too many vodka tonics: _Here's the four-one-one on fucking Gareth and Gemma. One, Gemma has breasts and a vagina, but this can be worked around. Two, they are both straight, which isn't an issue for Gemma, but might be for Gareth. Three, they'd have to be here for some reason. Four, John put down the light pen. Four, we'd have to be willing to have sex with a woman, and in this scenario, I have to admit, I am intrigued, so I am willing to take one for the team..._

Gemma and Scott murmur to each other behind him, as he lets John smirk the smirk that generally belongs to his other half and toe open the door to the bedroom. There's two dogs asleep on the bed, and Gareth worries that they're going to fuck with them in here, but John snaps his fingers and they jump off, as if they have been possessed by good little doggy spirits for once. John's been hiding their true personalities in a jar for this moment, when he can shock the hell out of Gareth with his magical skills. He should be in Aladdin, not Robin Hood.

He likes to think that he's a free, liberated guy, but his mouth is a little dry when he decides to suck it up and admit, "I don't--I don't know how to do this." The 'this' is a lot of things that he imagines take place on this bed. If they wanted him and Gemma to give them a show, he'd turn the bed into a three ring circus, fucking under the big-top, but as it is, there's two too many bodies in the equation, well, one, if he counts that one time he'd had a three way with these girls in London. A glance at Scott and John reminds him that this is definitely not like that. For one, there is no tequila.

"Step one, get comfortable." John circles him a little, or rather leads him in a hand-holding circle so that his back is to the bed, and then he's falling a bit, landing on smooth duvets and pillows and dog hair, John crawling after him like a wild cat, all that missing is the purr. "Easy," he says.

Gareth scrabbles a bit on the duvet and then he pulls John down for a kiss, because that's the best thing to do on bed sometimes, kiss just when you get there, as if you're declaring that you have no intention to _sleep_ on the bed, just fuck, which is, to be fair, the bed's other intended purpose. 

"Now we take off our clothes," John murmurs. "It's the opposite of putting them on." He pulls away. "I'll start, and then you--" he points to Gemma crawling on the bed from the other side, Scott on her tail. "You better help."

Gemma laughs, that throaty thing, and she reaches over Gareth's form to cradle John's chin in her hand, run one of her long-nailed thumbs over his lips, and he pulls it in, sucking. "You're just a little Hoover, aren't you?" and when John's hands reach for her, Gareth pushes back, slides up the covers to get out of the way, when John shows off his patented kissing technique, the kind he uses in the movies: hand on the face, full mash of lips, like driving through the other person, and Gareth remembers what that feels like, his lips still tingle from it, and he wants to see if that's how John kisses Scott. It occurs to him that he could ask, right now, and he'd see it. Gemma is great at this, actually, and he's fascinated to watch her flow with it, kiss John Mutherfucking Barrowman on his bed like she's there all the time, like she's done it a thousand times before. With Scott behind her watching intently, almost curiously, she's not intimidated by that, or Gareth playing with the waistband of her jeans, or John's heavy breathing when they draw it on and on and on. Kissing becomes a dare, another version of 'Ding Dong Ditch,' but instead of running away after pushing the doorbell, she's going to stand there and wait for him to yank it open.

When John loses the game and breaks the kiss, he rubs his cheek against hers and hums. Maybe he likes the fact that there's no hair, or her skin is soft. She probably smells like perfume. Even after she's been smoking, Gemma always smells a little bit like her perfume. Gemma unlocks her hands and looks down at him, fingers of her left hand reaching for his right and tugging him upright until all four of them make a haphazard line of kneeling bodies, still fully clothed on the bed.

There's a rustle behind him and then John's t-shirt sails over Scott's head to land in the open hamper. "Three points," John murmurs into his ear, and when his arms come around Gareth, it's as if the shedding of his top clothing has uncovered a small heater; John feels hotter even through his shirt. His lips run along the back of Gareth's neck, and John murmurs something about _all these curls_ , and he wants to say something back about straightening irons but he can't, since Gemma has met John's eyes, and then his, and her hands, still holding his, guide them to her own shirt. 

"Oh," John says, when Gareth pulls Gemma's top off, and her breasts, barely contained by the shirt and less by the bra, spill into clearer view. Behind him, John breathes into his neck, and Gareth lifts his eyes from Gemma's chest to her face and Scott's face behind her, smiling into her hair, eyes not looking at him, but at John, his eyes always on John even when his hands come from behind Gemma and play with the top edges of the lace, sliding the cups further down to expose her dark nipples. Gareth can't touch her, not when Scott's fingers are teasing her, not when John reaches up with one hand of his own and cups her left breast. "Even I have to admit, they're lovely."

Gareth laughs. "You love tits." John cuffs him over the head, and moves him a little closer to Gemma and Scott, one hand around Gareth's waist, the other playing with Gemma's breast through the fabric

"He's got a point," Scott offers, thumb dragging down the lace just a little more.

John shrugs. "What's not to love?" He crowds Gareth forward to lean down and drag his lips along the underside of the right breast, over Scott's thumb and then naked skin. Gemma twitches with the contact and Gareth's hips jerk. It makes John slide his hand lower, rest it on the top of Gareth's thigh, squeezing a little.

Her skin is damp, sweat in her bra, maybe even a little dew from a hasty dressing out of the shower. He looks up from her tits to her face, finds her watching him, and her lips twitch as she stares at his shirt. She pulls him closer by it, away from John who just moves after him, and she kisses him, despite the--well, he isn't blind, John rates somewhere above him on the attractiveness scale--despite that, despite her _choices_ , she's snogging him, and his hand curves under her arse, pulling her to him. That the back of his hand brushes against Scott, is strangely fine by him. They stretch out on the duvet, pressed to each other like a train of bodies, side by side by side by--huh. Side.

John is nibbling on his neck, then he slides his hand palm-flat down the front of Gareth's body, squeezing between him and Gemma, past his crotch, to curl around the inside of Gareth's thigh, pulling his hips tight to John's. John's thumb is pressed to the underside of his balls, and his arse is mashed against John's crotch. Not strictly part of the undressing, that, but maybe that's how it is. John pushes his hand up and Gareth grinds down; the groan in his neck is a bit of 'oh yeah' and a lot of frustration. Scott uses the tip of his tongue on one of Gemma's hardened nipples and then looks up to Gareth, quirk of a smile and then behind him to John. 

Then Gemma says to them all, "I think that this would go better if we all--"

Scott plants a peck on her cheek and sits up again, peeling off his shirt and rolling onto his back so he can unbutton his jeans. Gemma does her own wiggle routine, and Gareth looks back at John, already topless, and eyes glaze as he watches the two of them get naked, Gemma giggling and Scott snickering a little, and suddenly Gareth is the only one with clothes on, or no, John still has trousers on, but he's working on them as Gareth watches, shimmying hips and kicking feet. Gemma's knickers are tiny and pink and laid across her skin like frosting. He splays a hand across her hip, likes to slide the tips of his fingers across the tiny elastic strap that trails over her there. Behind him, John is pressing up to him again, murmuring something about his state of dress and how unfair. He'd like to be charitable, but he's not sure if he can handle what is happening in front of him, Gemma's fingers reaching as she shifts and her hand wraps around Scott's cock. 

John makes a sharp inhale. "Now, there's a sight," he whispers, then laughs, full and throated and Gareth is intrigued to see Scott's writhing hips, his head tossed back like a finished horse, his mouth agape when Gemma works him, her hair whispering across the pillow behind her, her own hips rolling a bit in sympathy. John's hand goes over Gareth to find Gemma's other arm, but she bats him away.

"Not an octopus," she mutters, all winsome teeth and arching neck. "You have four hands there." She eyes Gareth, and for a split second it's their secret code, 'You all right, yeah?' and he has to kiss her then, lean into her, wants to slam one hand on the bed between her and Scott, cover her with his body, because she's fucking gorgeous and even with her hands full of someone else's cock, she's looking at him, and he wants to be able to say to her that he can be the same way, really he can. And he will, he wants to promise that for the rest of their lives, he will, just like that. More than anything he wants her to believe him, not simply believe him and then remember what he does for a living. But it's only a kiss, and Scott's lips brush past his ear and jawline before it's only her and him and he hopes he is communicating more than just spit even with this.

Gemma holds him then, and Scott and John make strange noises, as if they are evaluating the thing in-between them, _Straight love in our bed, interesting, Mister Warhol, an intriguing concept_ , and when Gareth falls away, she is laughing and he wants to hum the National Geographic theme song. 

"No really," John says in a full voice, not outdoor voice or anything, but not a whisper or something quiet that would be more appropriate. "Strip, darling." And then Scott reaches over Gemma to undo his fly (of course, he does) and Gemma's pulling at the hem of his shirt and John is scooting down and around to yank his legs out, and he's being stripped from all angles, and Jesus, there's giggling, _giggling_ from somewhere. From everywhere. He is fairly sure that he can't even process enough thought to conjure a giggle. He's trying to be sophisticated about this here and manages until John's cock presses to his thigh and he startles with the heat and John catches his eye, a bit of challenge in them, a bit of amusement. Gareth skims his fingers over John's cock, when, in the corner of his eye, Gemma splays over the bed for Scott's hands on her tits. It's not bad, but he's drawing the line at a blowjob. Barrowman is grinning like he's reading his thoughts.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" He nods over that the other two. "Scott is exploring new horizons," he wheedles.

"Then give Scott a fucking ribbon." Gareth squeezes John's cock, because he's not afraid, he's really not, and handjobs aren't gay any more than cocksucking is. The hand is just easier to wash, less intimate, less permanent. Hell, handjobs are practically currency in some locker rooms in state school. It occurs to him that for every time he's joked about having Gemma with another girl, he's never thought about whether she'd, well. Her fingers filter through Scott's hair when he tongues her breasts, and when Gareth thinks about it, he pumps John's cock lightly, laughing when he falls on him, and John is reaching for him, and it takes a little bit of shifting, but suddenly everyone has their hands on someone else, their mouths on someone else. He can't resist reaching for Gemma when John's fingers close around his cock.

Gemma is wet wet wet through her knickers, and he bypasses them right into her cunt, two fingers to reach in, spread the slickness in her all over her clit. John's hand is on his chin, and he's forced to turn into the kiss, not that John's being ignored, but Barrowman in anything but the center must be jarring for everyone, actually. John is kissing like a movie star, like a porn star would if porn stars kissed, actually, if they kissed like that was an essential part of porn, and not just cocksucking and fucking and coming. Gemma and Scott are making noises, generally whispers and gasps, and Gareth works his fingers in her even though he can't see what he's doing. It's not important that he does. 

"You sneak," she whispers to him, and he runs a circle in her favorite spot. "You--"

Scott snorts a little and Gareth twists on the sheets, just to be able to look at Gemma, sneak in a kiss that makes John laugh into his neck. One of the dogs is howling outside the bedroom door. Leave it to John to abandon the bed and go check. Gareth falls back with a groan, but before it's all cold sheets and not enough bodies, he's being kissed again for consolation.

"Hey, keep them open," Scott says as he draws a thumb across his eyelids. Gareth complies and it's strange, seeing Gemma from the corner of his eye, just watching, and feeling Scott's hand in his hair, directing his face. He's kissing John's very GAY husband. Nevermind that, then, he's got his fingers in Gemma at least.

John bounces back onto the bed behind Gareth, and then it's a tangle of elbows in too soft places as he angles around Scott and Gareth in the middle to snog Gemma, the sounds suggest it at least, even as Gareth is too taken by the tongue drawn along his own and the thumb rubbing back and forth slowly across his cheek, unshaved morning stubble and all. Everyone else is smooth here, and he's the odd man out, rugged and sharp while they slide along one another, even John's legs are slick and sweet when they run along the back of his calves and then the top one goes up to hook around his thigh, pulling it back until his hips are jutting out, cock straining and hard, exposed to open air and somewhat more scandalous now that its on display. You'd think that with a girl and three blokes, they'd put the woman on the centrefold and drape themselves over and around. 

Gareth looks down his body, then lets his head drop back, not watching as John's hand smooths over his ribs and hip and along the cradle of his thigh and Gareth opens more under that touch.

"You're hot," John whispers into his ear.

Gareth shakes his head, tries to hold in a laugh, failing and turning it into a chuckle. "Nutter."

John's lips curve up in a smile against the side of his neck as his fingers play with the hair on Gareth's thighs. Gareth glances at Gemma and Scott, Scott's fingers still fascinated by tits with that tight focus of something new to explore and tease. Gareth gets that. He loves her tits and the rest of her. John's hand slips to the inside of his thigh and he opens more to that touch, pressing back against John's body, hard cock and smooth skin and that first dampness of sweat, sweat at--it must still be early. Before ten even. They would make a good spread like this for one of the gay magazines, they dig the bed pictures. Maybe something not so gay, like 'Threesome Weekly'. John would smile up at the camera, and Gemma and Scott would have their eyes closed, and Gareth would...he'd have that deer in the headlights look, because he's never ready for the still lens. He has to move his body into the good shots. 

"I know you aren't going to let me do you," John whispers, and it's so low Gareth knows it's only for him. "That's okay, you know."

Gareth laughs, a bit strained on the high notes, he's shit with those anyway. "Thank fuck." John's tickling his fingers over Gareth's cock and pushes his cock against Gareth's arse anyway, just for the tease, and Gareth shoves back against him. 

Scott pulls away from his breast fascination and his eyes flit from one to the other to the other, and it occurs to Gareth that this is what it must be like to be a girder, or a strut, or a blank sheet of drafting paper on Scott's light table. Doesn't he have a computer program for that architecture thing? Probably. Gemma is licking her lips and waiting, and Gareth is confused by that because she's generally not shy in bed. He's generally not shy in bed either, but he's lying here, letting John hump his arse and waiting to be instructed. 

"Lie back," Scott says finally, pushing Gareth's shoulder, and then to John, "You come over here." John rolls over them all, squirmy and wiggling his eyebrows and making "waaaaaaaa" noises like a ninja in a Hong Kong action film. Gemma sits up and crawls into his lap, as if she had known all along that Gareth would be on the bottom, and she'd let him worry about it for--the quirk of one of her eyebrows tells him he's thinking too hard about this.

There's a whole festival of condoms. One for Gareth and one for Scott, condoms on cocks like they're going out of style, man. The packaging on his says something about it being ribbed for her pleasure, and John titters and remarks about being a 'laydee', emphasis on the 'lay' part. Scott's is probably Extra-Strong. Screw the 'Threesome Weekly', they'd do well for a safe sex campaign, a good cause and all. In his head he pictures some birds-eye view of the bed, artifully draped strings of condom packets, one across Gemma's tits, one along John's cock, a big X, yeah, Scott turned from the camera so there's no cock to hide, but a rope of them along one thigh, or across his waist, maybe his neck. 

Gareth is thinking about the setup too much for someone who doesn't have an interest in directing. John is kneeling over Scott, arse wriggling like something shameless, and licks Scott's cock, tongue long and curling around the head, then sliding his mouth down over it and sucking him deep, moaning somewhere in the back of his throat. He opens his eyes and turns his head, sucking the cock at an angle, to look at Gareth and Gemma, smirking as he slurps deliberately.

"Show-off." Scott laughs, slaps John's arse and waves the condom, indeed extra-strong, in front of John's face until John grabs it from his fingers.

Gareth fumbles with his own and tears it open with his teeth, looking down at his crotch and Gemma's hand stroking him. He twitches, wanting to fuck _now_ , and maybe wanting to watch John suck cock a little longer. It's not a fantasy exactly, it's more the idea of it. He groans when Gemma squeezes around him and he slips the condom over his dick. A look to the side shows that John's done it for Scott, synchronized fucking preparations, they'd win the olympics with this gig.

Gemma shifts only a little, just enough and sinks down onto him. He holds her by the hips and falls back against the pillows, pushing his hips up to delve into her even as she brackets his hips with her knees, setting the rhythm. He smoothes his fingers up her sides and over her breasts, and her hair spills over her body, and she's beautiful and his.

Scott likes to hold her by the back of her neck, and she cards her far hand in his hair when he kisses her, never pausing as he works himself into John, who thrusts his arse in the air, moans like they moaned last night and Gareth knows when John's eyes find his, when he inches forward to close the distance and kiss Gareth, they hadn't been faking the night before, and this exact thing had been happening in both rooms, this thing happening on the bed. This morning is just a replay of the same without the plaster wall. 

John groans into his mouth, his lips going all slack for a moment, head dropping to Gareth's chest, mouthing sweaty skin, as every thrust from Scott makes him rock forward a little. Gemma curls her fingers around the back of John's head, playing with the short hair there. She tells Gareth she misses his being like that sometimes, but then it's all about it tickling over her tits a moment later and he figures she's fine with it. Scott's fingers play over hers there for a moment, before he curls them around John's shoulder, pulling John up a little. It slides John off Gareth's skin with wet sucking noises and Gemma laughs and John is more expletive than that, fingers curling into the sheets and probably looking for a wall to bang against. Gareth reaches for him, wants a kiss again, because he can and because it's okay here and now.

"You're such a bottom," Gareth whispers against John's lips.

John laughs. "So are you." It turns into a groan and a, "Fuck, Scott, fuck," but he blinks his eyes open and just grins and then leans down to snog him with all tongue, while Scott and Gemma are doing the same somewhere in the background. Her hips swing back and forth over him, and his cock slides in and out of her, and he has to angle his head around John's to watch. She's wet around him and he reaches down, draws his thumb over her clit and watches her watch him. Eye-fucking, an old acting coach told him, eye-fucking is key to selling a scene, and he had used it in his fifteen minutes, dammit. John presses a wet kiss to the side of his neck and shuts up, eyes closing as he pushes back against Scott. Gemma leans forward, catches herself on her hands either side of Gareth's head and her tits are suddenly right there, and Gemma grinds down hard when he fucks up and plays with her nipples. A hint of a moan from her while John commands the room with noise. 

At one point he simply closes his eyes, which is a conflict because he wants to be able to see everything: Gemma and her smiling face, John's wide eyes and open mouth and forehead pressed into the sheets, Scott's hands that roam along John's back, his face when he smiles, his neck when he tosses it back. The sun finally comes from behind the clouds, Cardiff and it's three point five seconds of sunshine per day, and when the beam blasts in the window it hits Scott's hair, turning it golden, and Gemma's hair next to him, laced with red, and she rolls her hips in a circle, bearing down when he thrusts up, and John's sweaty fingers slide over his hand and tentatively towards the join of Gemma and him. Gareth guides them there, thinking that John wants to touch his cock one last time, but as he gasps and shudders, his eyes have that strange gleam of concentration, and Gareth helps him find her clit. Scott reaches around when he buries himself in John's arse, grabbing his cock, and Gemma's hand goes with him, and suddenly everyone's eyes shut, at least Gareth's eyes shut and three seconds later when he blinks them open to check, they still are, a silent pact that when we all come, this one last thing that's like _your turn, your turn, your turn, my turn_ , it will be in the darkness of their own minds.

He can't help it, when he arches up and into her one last time, he opens his eyes and turns his head, and John is right there, smiling, cheek pressed to the wadded duvet, staring. He winks.

Collapsing and wiping and binning rejected things takes about three awkward seconds, like resetting a shoot (all those damn biscuits he threw in that bowl, they picked them up in record time over and over and over) so that they can all flop back onto the bed, still panting, shuddering, Gareth's cock is already soft, but it wants to twitch. They just lie there, no one in the mood to move and he must have blacked out for a moment, or whatever, Gemma is always saying that he falls asleep right after, and that's not always true, but this time, his brain almost doesn't want to deal with the aftermath, so he lets John lie half on him, and they all breathe into the dense air that smells pretty, whoa, it smells like four people just got off in here. 

John snuggles into his shoulder, chuckling, and then he shifts. Gareth is debating putting his arm out for him to settle into, like he does for Gemma, when here's a loud farting noise and Gemma goes still. Scott's arms flies up and Gareth can hear the facepalm rather than see it. "They don't smell!" John says defensively. "Ha ha, they don't smell," he snickers and Gareth rolls his eyes.

"You are so lucky we're not under the covers," Scott says around Gemma, peering over her shoulder at him. "What's that wretched--"

"Dutch oven," John murmurs, genuinely sleepy. Gareth doesn't want the smell (they don't smell!) to hit him, but he wants to be ready. John is sleepy against his shoulder, wiping his cheek and forehead on the skin there, smiling into it. "Dutch oven is classic. Like Dior." High fashion and flatulence. If that doesn't boil down the Barrowman experience, he doesn't know what will. Torchwood and testicles, maybe. 

Gareth closes his eyes and knows that he disappears into dreamland, because he misses John's horrible farting stench, and when he hears Gemma murmuring she's in mid-conversation with someone, and he has that horrible sleep taste in his mouth. He's sticky with sweat and spit and come and in general wishing that he could take a shower, but Gemma is tracing lazy eights on his belly and on the other side of him John is breathing into his shoulder, asleep for once, asleep while the rest of them are awake, Scott having shifted to lie behind John, propping himself on one elbow, head to hand, and he and Gemma whisper lightly as if Gareth isn't there or awake. 

Truth? He's not sure he is, until he shifts and something is stuck to the back of his leg, and when he reaches down, scratches, pulls it up, it's a big pink feather, like from a boa, and he knows then that he is where he thinks he is. 

"The strawberries should be done," Scott says. "They'll have lambs for Easter. And Easter eggs."

"March," Gemma replies. "Or earlier. You'll see them up in--"

"--not in Newport."

She laughs. Gareth doesn't need to look at her to know that she's mouthing a choice word at Scott without voicing it, and it's nicer to keep his eyes closed. Then it's all talk about Wales, and Gareth's not sure where she knows all that from, but there's something about her grandparents in there, they live up north, and family holidays spent playing with lambs. He spent his holidays on the estate, yeah well, look where he is now. Gemma is trying to teach Scott some Welsh words with that mangled school Welsh no-one actually masters and he repeats them dutifully. Gareth smirks. Good times. Pwned. His own knowledge doesn't go farther than fuck invitations.

"I went by myself," Scott says, moved on to another topic while Gareth's mind was still on practicing his Welsh on birds. "Well, with a few mates. I thought it was well-done even if the story was..." He trails off and sheets rustle so he's probably gesturing something.

Gareth can feel Gemma nod against his chest. "I liked the effects though when the water, and the wave-"

"--yes, that was good, even if that wave, well, it doesn't work like that." Pause. "Long one though."

Gemma murmurs assent. "Bloke next to me fell asleep," she says, laughing under her breath. It tickles over Gareth's skin. He hasn't been to a film with her in ages, they should go sometime. Be romantic. Be the two of them. Preston, they could do that in Preston between the shite panto and Clarky pulling shit and people mourning Ianto. Does Preston have a cinema? He'd do his Ianto expression from that one episode for her and she'd tell him to stop being a wanker. Truth is, he wouldn't. He's not Ianto bloody Jones. For one, he can't afford the suits. For two, he can't afford to _clean_ the suits.

"Supposed to be nice up there." Scott moves on the bed, it wriggles a bit, and John moves behind Gareth in turn, mumbling into his shoulder. Probably drooling.

"It's not LA." Gemma's thumb traces the line of Gareth's hip.

"LA is," Scott sighs. "It's ... neat, sometimes, but I don't like it much. John likes it." A hint of contempt and rolling eyes even in the voice.

"It's sunny."

"So is London on good days." Scott chuckles. "It's a place to see, but..." he trails off. "Good to have dreams though?"

Gemma presses her lips to Gareth's chest, and Gareth, even still drifting between sleep and not sleep, tries not to react to that or the line of conversation. They'd had that talk, and he felt like he'd let her down when LA hadn't worked out, fucking casting idiots, fucking monkeys made to perform. She'd have liked to live there. He guessed. They'd talked, but not, not like that.

Besides, he likes Newport, in some messed up masochistic way of living in the dumps to keep it real and not forget where you're coming from. It's better than London. He knows people. It's good. He knows that some people think his whole 'I'm a Welshman, hear me drink!' affection is faked, but he likes to stare at the rolling grass from the highway, dream that he has a house up there. The grass in LA, in The States, it's not as green. Never, ever as green. 

There has to be a study about that, a scientific study about the green grass of Wales.

"Things working out for you though?" Scott asks and it's gone past LA, and Gemma talks about her contracts and Scott talks about clients he's worked for, and then they drift back to strawberries and banana trees and earning ribbons, as John snuffles into Gareth's shoulder, and about films Gareth hasn't seen and he's too knackered to catch the titles.

When he opens his eyes again, the room is considerably dimmer, the stretch of afternoon yawning into evening, and there's a dog on his legs. There's a sheet there too, thrown over his dick, possibly for decency but more likely because this is the house of two men who understand the mysterious ways of their own dogs. Gareth runs his hand down his face and rolls over to the clock, but it's just a block of black until the other side of the bed says, "Look up."

His eyes obey the command and there in the ceiling is the time, projected from the bedside table: 4:38. Then his eyes leave the ceiling and he flips over towards the other side of the bed, where John is buried in the duvet, just the top of his hair sticking out. There is more rustling and John pulls the duvet down to show his face, and Harris's face as he lies in front of John under the covers. 

Gareth blinks. "What are you doing?"

John yawns, and he must immediately regret it because Harris takes the exact same second to lick his face, so his long tongue ends up licking the roof of John's mouth and he snaps it shut in surprise, eyes wide. "Oh, nasty."

John kicks Harris out from under the duvet and lies back down, pulling faces and scraping the top of his mouth with his tongue. Gareth settles himself on his side, head propped up on one hand. "That was pretty gross," he admits. 

John regards him for one split second before Gareth realises that he's in trouble, and then it's all, "give us a kiss," and John attacking him and that game he used to play when he was a kid, Russian Spit torture, when the worst part was holding the person above you away, except that there's no giant phlegm ball and John isn't pushing too hard, even if his fingers are looking for spots to tickle, because he _has_ to win, yeah. John manages to get in there, to push Gareth's arms to the side, so he's a flat Welsh Jesus a bit and he falls on him, hitting his chest with an "uunnf" and a bit of an apologetic look. This does not stop John from licking the side of his face, a long strip that devolves into, "Ewwww, you're all scratchy," and then a split second later lips on his mouth and he's kissing John again, dog tongue and all. 

There's hands in places, and a certain number of missing bodies from the bed, bodies whose presence made it all right last time, but this time he pushes a little bit and says, "Where's Gemma?"

The smile he gets is apologetic and a little sleepy and possibly sheepish. "I have a confession," John says, trying hard to school his face into one of seriousness when he knows he's about to make a joke. He's bollocks at it. "Gemma and Scott have left us. They've bought a small farm, and they're going to live out their days together harvesting cows and planting pineapples."

Gareth stares at him for a good ten seconds before they both laugh, a slow chuckle that's hard to blend into the fact that John hasn't moved from lying on top of him, and he's, well, he's happy, and Gareth is sure that he's happy, but it's all reaction and shit. He wants to continue the dialogue, say something like, "What ever will we do to console our broken hearts?" but that's shit dialogue and the kind of thing that one might say at this point if this were a story, and then they would fall into each other's arms a little more and he might let John suck his cock and then they might roll around in the sheets and have a glorious time of it. 

Except.

So instead he says, "I hope they make us steak on that farm of theirs, because I'm fucking hungry."

John pauses for one more minute, maybe he's thinking and forgotten that he's thinking while using Gareth as a living twister mat. Maybe he's thinking about steak. Maybe he's pondering something deeper.

"I could go for steak," he says thoughtfully. Ah, the Barrowman machine at work. Gareth pushes him off and stands, stretching. He searches for his clothes on the floor, as they are his only clean ones and now they're rumpled, but they're still clean because he'd only had them on for about a half hour before, ah. Whatever this was. 

There's a swat on his bent arse, and the smack cracks off the painted walls, but he doesn't look back because John is already moving, over at the dressers for fresh clothes of his own because he never has to pick clothes off the floor and put them on. Gareth would make a joke about being famous, but it's more about this being his house. Well, and being famous.

"We have to get home tonight," he says as he sticks his feet in his shorts and pulls, then doesn't bother tugging all the way up before he jams his toes into his jeans. "Need to get ready for Preston." God that's a weight that's come crashing down again for a few seconds. And they do have to do laundry and he has to think about what he's going to do over the holidays, and there's something about visiting family in there, and something about buying Gemma a present, and an album to make (Clarky has texted him three times in the past week with just the word, 'synesthesia', and he knows he's going to have to spend some quality time with google to figure it out.). 

"That's right. What are you, Prince Charming?" John's already dressed when he speaks, and Gareth is surprised at how quick it was, when he looks up and there's a big Ed Hardy tiger almost point blank range in front of him. He wants to poke it and go, 'rowr'. Instead he settles on clashing John's bold fashion design with his own: TOOL. Hah. 

"Prince ROCK Charming." He jumps his trousers up and buttons them, tries to remember if he had socks on. John hands him a roll of white tube socks and then he sits on the edge of the bed next to him so they can do it in mirror images. Jack and Ianto put on socks. There has to be a market base for pics of that. 

John pauses in the middle of putting a sock on. "Do they really think you can't do it--"

Gareth sighs. "I don't know. Something about image." He shrugs. "I sang them some Air Supply."

John hits his shoulder for that. "You're not smooth enough for Air Supply." A brush to his cheek to back that up.

"Maybe I just need an orchestra of sexy women."

John laughs. "Point. Sexy women do help with a lot of things." 

And isn't _that_ loaded. 

"Look--" he begins, because he wants to say something before they go out there. But John's hand lands on his thigh, and it's fucking huge. He doesn't have thin legs, not by a long shot so that says something about how big the man's hands are. He just stares at it, waiting for it to slide up, slide down, squeeze, anything, but it just sits there like a prop.

John's face is more animated, quirked in a grin, some deflective thing that goes *ting!* and all bad things bounce off it. It's the kind of smile he wears when he doesn't want anyone to get past the veneer. Gareth has one of those too, especially after John had told him to practise it. One night when they'd been in the dailies room, John had turned to him just after they'd started shooting season two and said, 'Sometimes when you're in front of the fans and the cameras, you just have to smile, but you can't. But you have to do it. For a lot of reasons, and it has to be in a way that lets them know they're worthwhile and you're not humouring them.' And then after a pause, 'even if it's bullshit.'

It makes him sad to see it here. Though why is also beyond him. "You're a great guy, Gaz," he says, and then he waits for a second, "and she's amazing."

Gareth stills--his other leg has been jittering all over the place and he sits for a split second, waiting for something, but then he finally realises that he can hear the telly out in the great room, something upbeat and at that moment Gemma laughs, Scott singing bass to back her up, and he feels the urge to ask her how to harvest a tomato or gift a cow.

"Yeah," he says into the dimming light and the teflon smile. "Yeah, she is."

***

The house lights are down and he'll be on in about fifteen minutes. Gemma is long gone to sit in the stalls and heckle him. She likes the yellow trousers, she calls him 'Mister Fancypants'. No doubt she'll be taking pictures with her mobile and texting them to people he knows and by intermission he'll have about five texts from all his friends, "omg ur so gay dude.' One from John, too, that'll say, 'f-tastic f-tastic f-tastic, bitch jb' so he knows that John's doing it and not Rhys or some member of the bizarre TeamBarrowman TwitterBrigade. He almost wants to steal a pair of the trousers at the end, the white satin ones, yeah, mail them to John with a card that says, 'Some jim-jams for you. I didn't wash them, huffer.' But he's afraid of what he might get in return.

So he sits in the chair and looks at himself in the suit. It's shit material, but under the lights it's pretty swank, and if he pretends that he's Ziggy Stardust or somesuch he can get through the next few weeks. Oh who is he kidding? Under the rock and roll and the "Rock Prince Charming" he knows all the words to every song in _Aladdin_ and _Pocahontas_ , and he likes to cuddle up with the dogs and watch _The Aristocats_ on DVD. He might even have picked up a copy of _Cars_ the other day. If he and Gemma are going to do it, then they're going to do it, he says to himself in the mirror, looking at himself with painted eyes that will seem much more real out on stage but right now look ridiculous.

His eyes flitter over the dressing room table (he gets a dressing room table! But not a dressing room, there isn't one, and that's okay) and alight on the glittery bag tucked into a corner, little prefabricated To/From card that comes with it dangling from the ribbon handle. He sees the cursive G inside the winking mouth of the card and reaches out to open it with two fingers, yup, it's to him, from "J/S". Huh. 

Glitter bag, ribbons, silvery in the light. Handfuls of glitter-studded tissue paper, the shit bastard, and a waterfall of it spills onto the table and into his lap. It'll just add more sparkle to his first entrance. 

Buried at the bottom of the bag he feels it, and he almost doesn't remove it, because it's all scrotty and probably manky and they might have run it through the wash, but they probably didn't. It's crusty with soda and dog slobber and human slobber and everything else they threw at it, and that is the way it is supposed to be, he figures. He sets the Dalek on the table in front of him, and it tilts because it dried all lopsided. He pokes it with a finger. Makes little Dalek noises. 'EXTERMINATE' and 'EXPLAIN' and 'BUY ME A PINT'. It falls backwards and he rights it. "HARVEST YOUR PINEAPPLES," he tells it. 

Someone ducks in and gives him the five minute mark, so he tucks Dalek Blech back into the bag and sticks it in his pack because he doesn't know everyone well enough to trust them not to steal it (who would steal that? Oh hell, who would steal his shorts? And yet), and locates his hat. Pat the bag one more time for good luck. Maybe one night he'll look out to see them in the stalls, but no, John's got tights to stuff himself into, he'll text Gareth a picture of his crotch in them and say, 'mine is bigger jb'. Gareth wants to tell him that he never has to sign his texts to him, but he does it now to everyone out of habit. Word is he texted Carole and signed it and she mocked him soundly for it. Probably on her facebook. Fucking Facebook.

He's ready as he'll ever be. He wishes he could take the Dalek with him, stuff it in a pocket, but it's too dangerous. If it falls out and he loses it, or it falls out and the audience sees it, all of a sudden there's pics and net rumours and people remember _Oh yeah,_ Ianto's _in a panto,_ which has a better ring to it but is not the truth.

John has never confused the two of them, he remembers, which is dumb because no one else on the set ever did either. But he'd once called John 'Jack', and to this day he's not sure how much of a slip-up it was. 

One minute. He stands in the eaves and goofs with the others. He tries to see Gemma, and he will, but even if he doesn't she'll tell him later her favorite bits, whilst they're curled up with the dogs and he presses his face to her warm, soft skin. He'll thread his fingers through her hair and they'll have a sit, a kiss, a talk, one of many, one of a routine.

His eyes look for other faces in the crowd, but they're not there, of course. But it doesn't matter, not when she's there, he thinks. It doesn't matter at all.

END


End file.
